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Natasha Bakht proclaims her Muslim identity in dance

Her piece 786, which includes classical Indian, contemporary dance and martial arts, is part of Fall for Dance North festival.

Natasha Bakht combines traditional Indian Bharatanatyam, contemporary dance and even Kalaripayattu, an Indian marital arts discipline, in her piece 786 for Fall for Dance North. (BYFIELD PITMAN)

By Ryan PorterEntertainment Reporter

Tues., Oct. 4, 2016

In Indian contemporary dancer Natasha Bakht’s new piece, 786, there’s a moment where she must seize an inner calm amid the pounding of a furious drum beat.

“I am trying to find these moments of enlightenment, even though there is so much going on in the world around me,” she says. “The world is spinning around you and it may feel chaotic, but you have to go within yourself within those moments to find peace.”

It’s a useful relaxation exercise for anyone, though seeking Zen live onstage at the Sony Centre might be fairly steep on the meditation difficulty curve.

Bakht’s work is one of two pieces commissioned for the popular three-day festivalFall for Dance North, which last year played to a sold-out audience of 10,000. She will perform as part of the mainstage showcase on Thursday and Friday.

Bakht, 44, has been thinking a lot about inner peace in a violent world and how it intersects with her own identity as a Muslim. She created 786 as an antidote to the stories of Muslim extremism that have dominated the media in the 15 years since Sept. 11, 2001.

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“This piece for me is the life of a busy urban Muslim who takes five times a day to pray and acknowledge the divine,” she says. “I wanted that real sense of sacredness at moments in the piece, but I also wanted there to be the sense of myself and the musicians really grooving.”

Hence a rock sequence scored by electric bass amid eclectic choreography that includes Bharatanatyam, the traditional Indian dance characterized by rigid limbs that Bakht grew up practising, but also contemporary dance and even Kalaripayattu, an Indian marital arts discipline. “You can’t divorce your history from your body and all of those elements sneak into my work in some way,” she says.

“Her Bharatanatyam training, along with her understanding of contemporary movement, has a beautiful way of coming out of her body naturally,” says Ilter Ibrahimof, artistic director of Fall for Dance North. “She’s a very precise, clean performer and that’s generally what speaks to me in dance.”

The name of the piece comes from a shorthand for the first phrase in the Qu’ran, “Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim”; Islamic for, “In the name of God, most gracious, most compassionate.”

In Bakht’s other life, as an associate professor in the faculty of law at the University of Ottawa, where she has written in defence of women’s rights to wear the niqab, she says her Muslim students will often write 786, the numerical total of the phrase’s letters in Arabic at the top of their exams. “Often Muslims will say that phrase before they begin any major endeavour,” she says.

Bakht identifies as Muslim but was raised by a Muslim father and a Hindu mother. As such, she was encouraged to “learn about many different ways of life and then decide for yourself what works.”

She doesn’t see a lot of Muslim-identified performers in the arts in Canada. “There’s a sense that Muslims are not artistic; they are not musicians and not dancers,” she says.

It’s one of the notions about Muslim identity that she hopes to change with 786. “There are multiple stories when it comes to Muslims and here’s one,” she says. “And it’s a positive one.”

Fall for Dance North runs Oct. 5 to 7 at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts. See ffdnorth.com for tickets information.

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